Satire and Genocide: Simplicissimus' Anti

131 SATIRE AND GENOCIDE: SIMPLICISSIMUS’ ANTI- COLONIAL PROTEST AND GERMAN INTELLECTUAL COLONIZATION Jeremiah Garsha HIS article examines an anomaly, the forty-first issue of the Tsatirical German weekly magazine, Simplicissimus. This 1904 Special Issue was dedicated in its entirety to the European imperialism project. In the sixty-one years the magazine was published, from 1896 until 1967 (with an interesting ten year pause from ‘944 to 1954), this was the only issue that fully and explicitly addressed colonialism. Its particularity underscores the existence of a rare and overlooked middle-class baclclash to African coloniaLism and the ideology of imperialism. The current historiography of European public dissent to colonialism and imperialism during this period is understudied and deserves much more attention.5’ This article is an attempt to draw scholarly focus to the existence of one episode of unique anti-colonial protest, while at the same time elucidating the colonized mindset of the German anti-colonial artists. I begin this article by setting up the history of the magazine in order to show that Simplicissimus represented the attitudes and political mindset of its middle-class authors and audience, who were responding to their lack of political power within the authoritative In fact, only in the last few years have scholars begun to seriously research the short and long-term effects German colonialism had on European and American cultural and political history. Volker Langbehn is one of the few and certainly one ofthe best authorities on this subject. See specifically, German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory, ed. Volker M. Langbehn (New York: Routledge, 2010). VOLUMEXX 2011 132 Jeremiah Garsha and militaristic system of government. Next, the article contextualizes the global events surrounding the publication of the forty-first issue, specifically the South African War (1899-1902) and the beginnings of the Imperial German genocide of the Herero and Nama in Southwest Africa (‘904-1907). By connecting the Simplicissimus colonial issue to the larger historical context, the illustrations can be read as texts in order to unpack deeply ingrained signs and discourses. This paper concludes with a thick analysis of three political illustrations that best represent the ways in which the anti-colonial artists were captured by the very imperial discourse they protested against. The first image stands in for a larger discussion of intellectual tropes vis-ä-vis racial paradigms and the “civilization mission,” the second picture docu ments various yet interconnected dimensions of the “colonial duty,” while the third image is ripe for a gendered analysis. When taken together, these three pages from the forty-first issue offer invaluable insight into the mindset of the Wilhelmine bourgeois intelligentsia and the larger issues they were protesting against. In April 1896, Albert Langen, a Munich-born publisher, and Tho mas Theodor Heine, a gifted art student from the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, founded Simpticissimus, a satiric weekly magazine that was dramatically influenced by the emerging aesthetic style of the Jugend stil movement, the German version of Art Nouveau.52 It is worth noting that from its inception, Simplicissimus was centered in Mu nich, the epicenter of Germany’s modern movements of art and literature during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Langen and Heine named their publication after the protagonist in the 1669 novel Derabenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch, or The Adventures ofGerman Simplicissimus, by author and satirist Hans JakobChristoffel von Grimmelshausen. The novel is one of Germany’s first and best works to use the picaresque style, a satirical type of prose fiction which details the humorous adventures of a witty and socially lower-class hero through the corruptions of society.53 With its allusion to Grimmelhausen, Langen and Heine’s magazine underscore its direct connection to a Germanic legacy of satirical social commentary. In naming the publication after a working-class hero, the title Simpli cissimus implies, while a product of left-leaning intellectuals, the Stephen Eskilson, Graphic Design: A New Histoiy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 96. 53John Heckman, “Emblematic Structures in Simplicissimus Teutsch,” Modern Language Notes, Vol. 84, No. 6 (1969), 889; Ulrich Wiclcs, ‘The Nature of Picaresque Narrative: A Modal Approach,” Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica, Vol. 89, No. 2 (ig), 248-249. Ex POST FACTO 133 authors and artists were in favor, theoretically, of the lower-class masses and directly opposed to the traditional oligarchy of right-wing conservatism. Simplicissimus’ critiques of authoritarian structures in govern ment most often took the form of caricature. In a promotion of the Jugendstil style, the magazine eschewed lengthy text and instead relied on large, often full-page, colorful illustrations. As a literal translation of its name suggests, Simplicissimus presented itself in one of the simplest forms of expression, cartoons and political illustra tions, and was thus more accessible to all segments of society. The standard format of the magazine featured a provocative cover illustra tion, followed by numerous smaller cartoon strips or and illustrations, a few poems and short stories, and an assortment of advertisements. The brief poems and stories were penned by young leftist authors, and in the early years of publication these authors helped shape Simplicis simus’ sharp satirical style.54 Simplicissimus’ provocative style and substance often caused controversy, which added to its appeal. The German government’s attempts at censorship only succeeded in dramatically increasing Simplicissimus’ readership. In just a four year period, between 1903 and 1907, the magazine was confiscated twenty-seven times.55 In its second year of publication, the thirty-first issue of Simplicissimus featured a caricature and short poem mocking Kaiser Wilhelm II during his 1889 visit to Palestine. In response, the German police force cracked down on the Simplicissimus contribu tors. In order to avoid arrest, publisher Albert Langen fled to Switzer land, and for five years edited the magazine in exile. Illustrator Thomas Heine and author frank Wedekind were arrested and given six-month prison sentences for the crime of majestatsbeleidigung, publically insulting the monarch.6 The scandal, dubbed “The Simpticissimus Affair,” greatly increased demand for the magazine, and served to popularize the antiestablishment reputation of the artists. Simplicissimus can be credited with launching the careers of Bruno Paul, a famed architect and illustrator, frank Wedekind, the well-known dramatist, authors Gustav Meyrink, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, and, most famously, authors Hermann Hesse and Rainer Maria Peter Jelavich, “Art and Mammon in Wilhelmine Germany: The case of frank Wedekind,” Central European History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (ig), 222. Taylor Allen, Satire and Society in Wilhelmine Germany: Kladderadatsch and Simplicissimus, 1890-1914 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 41. 16 Mary M. Paddock, “Redemption Songs or How franlc Wedekind Set the Simplicis simus Affair to a Different Tune,” German Studies Review, Vol. z8, No. 2 (2005), 247; Jelavich, Art and Mammon, 225. VOLUME XX • 2011 134 Jeremiah Garsha Rilke. It also made cover illustrator and co-founder Thomas Heine “the most popular and well-known illustrator in Germany” during the Wilhelmine and Weimar period.57 The founding members and subsequent contributors of Simpticissimus were usually members to the Munich-based Jugendstil art movement. Generally, they were leftist aligned, internationally versed members of the German liberal middle-class, who, like the Social Democrats, lacked political power for much of the late r8oos and early l900s. Both groups claimed to feel an affinity for the broad working-class.8 The cartoon format made the magazine quite popular with the masses, allowing the style and medium of the cartoons to convey the artists’ layered meanings and messages.59 Simpticissimus was widely circulated across all segments of German society.6° It was not the working-class, however, who were the target audience, but rather the emerging German middle-class. The creation of an urbanized middle-class within Germany was a product of the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). During this period, most of Europe experienced profound social and economic changes. Within Germany, however, the strong ethos of Prussian conservatism and militaristic culture continued to shape the domestic and foreign policy of the ruling elites. In Germany, writes historian Felix Gilbert, “aristocratic values were not replaced by bourgeois values; instead, the German high bourgeoisie became feudalized.”°’ Unlike other European great powers, Germany industrialized without a bourgeois revolution. The nascent political and economic liberalism was crushed beneath the state-sponsored system of big industry and banlcing cartels, and the inherited legacy of Prussian conservatism.sa Lacking political power, the German middle-class was most receptive to a magazine that made a mockery of the status quo rightwing rule. The popularity of Simpticissimus among the liberal middle-class shows Timothy W. Hues, Thomas Theodor Heine: Fin-de-siëcte Munich and the Origins of ‘Simplicissimus’ (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996), 70-71. David G. Blackbourn, ‘Class and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Center Party

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